Secret Santa Snowdown - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread

Linkblade91, I like it. I like the idea of a secret mage, but having to face two copies of Fireball, Forgotten Torch, Roaring Torch, and [Hearthstone Card (cloudprince) Not Found] in one game gets pretty annoying. I like having it support a slower, more defensive build. I think it is balanced at it's current cost, and I think it would be a useful tool for any slower mage deck, without being terribly OP. The only thing that bugs me is that the pillar can freeze itself. You may have done that deliberately due to balance, but flavor-wise I don't think it makes sense, and also it defeats the purpose of the card. I play this to freeze their minions, not to freeze the 0/6 pillar I gave them.

Wailor, I am torn between loving and hating this card. On one hand, it is really hard to use and the payoff is negligible (you could just play Al'Akir the Windlord, which is just as easy to cheat out but deals more damage). But on the other hand, it feels like a genuine freeze shaman card. And part of me likes it more due to the general silliness and dumbness of the card. Personally, I would give it 5 stars, but I wouldn't count on other people rating it very high.

Demonxz95, I feel the same way about your card now as I did before. It is a cool card, but since you have to freeze a minion and then play this in the same turn, it feels kind of clunky to use. 

Bloodmefist, First off I think the correct wording would be "Battlecry: Cast a number of random Secrets equal to this minions attack". I don't really like the idea of this card being neutral, since it shouldn't be that easy for non-secret classes to get secrets. I would put it in either Hunter or Paladin since both of those classes have handbuff and Secrets. I would probably pick paladin since most of Hunters handbuff stuff is beast related.

FenrirWulf, Your card is too wordy. I get why you'd do it, but it is unnecessarily complicated to pick a friendly minion, and then freeze enemy minions opposite it. Just have it freeze a target enemy minion. I like the back-and-forth of the original version, but it it is very wordy. I would either have it say "Freeze an enemy minion, give this to your opponent" and then just have it last forever. Or have it say "Freeze an enemy minion, give this to your opponent (5 Snowballs left!)" and then have it stop after 5 times. The version on the right is well balanced, but too similar to Frost Nova.

anchorm4n, Balance-wise, I think it is fine. It is exactly the type of wide-board effect hunters would get. But flavor-wise I think your card is lacking. Having a "Christmas tree" in hearthstone means having 5 secrets, so it would make sense for your literal Christmas tree card to benefit from having 5 secrets. It also doesn't make a whole lot of sense flavor-wise for a Christmas tree to deal damage.

DestroyerR, First off, you did a great job with the Grinch reference. Not just in name and art, but also in the ability. In terms of balance and play, I think the card could use some tweaking. I am guessing the idea is that you will want to kill him before he gives the cards back, and the opponent wants him alive so they don't have to lose cards. But at a 6 mana 4/5 it feels a little awkward. I would give him more health to make him harder for your opponent to kill, and I would also put him in a class so that warlocks don't get more mill potential on top of Tickatus and Gnomeferatu. Also, I am pretty sure it fits the competition since all it says is it has to give your opponent cards. It doesn't say where they had to come from, or what had to happen to them first.

DavnanKillder, Disguised Saboteur: I would put this in warlock. I get why you put it in rogue, but switching sides, dealing damage to your face, and having those "curse" type effects that mess with your opponent (i.e. Curse of Rafaam, Chaos Gazer, Gnomeferatu etc) are all things warlock does. About balance, I think the 2/5 statline is good, but 4 mana seems like a lot. All this card does for you is damage your opponents face. Spending 4 mana and giving them a minion just to deal some face damage isn't usually a good move. And it is made worse by the fact that your opponent gets some agency in whether or not they trigger the ability. I would change it to 3 mana, or maybe make it a 2 mana 1/4.                                         Nixue, The Awake Winter: First off you should change the wording to just say "Frozen characters don't unfreeze." Second, I would change the name to something like "Awakened Winter" or "Spirit of Winter". It isn't a big deal but right now the name doesn't flow very well, at least to me. About the actual ability, it is very hard to balance because you could potentially have their whole board frozen, in which case if they don't have a removal spell they are stuck for the entire game. On the other hand, 4 health is very easy to deal with if your opponent has a removal spell or a rush minion, or if you don't have enough freezes. So all in all I think it would be too much work to get it balanced properly. I think your other card is a lot better.

Not sure if I'm a fan of the idea of giving your opponent a 0 Attack minion with a detrimental effect, since it's too dependant on the type of deck your opponent might have. I'd make it 1 Attack with tons of Health, so that it is at least possible to get rid of it in any scenario (as long as you play minions, of course).

Also, it suffers a bit from being forced (because of the three prompts thingy), but it could definetily be worse in this aspect.

That card was my personal favorite the week you presented it, so it's a good candidate for this comp as well.

I'm not sure about giving access to Secrets to all classes, but it's kind of a sloppy effect, so it won't be easy to abuse. In fact, its biggest abuser would probably be Paladin, which is already a Secret class, so…

EDIT: I see you thought the same and made a Paladin version. It definetly fits the class more than Neutral, but it loses a ton of flavor, which was its greatest strength, so I don't know what to tell you…

Pretty good flavor. I like the second version better, since the first one is too complex. Also, combining swarm with Freeze effects is a very good way of distinguishing Freeze Shaman from Freeze Mage.

My main issue is that the artwork screams Druid to me, but that isn't a Secret class. I don't see a good way to fix this, unfortunatelly.

Between the two versions, I'd say I prefer the Epic one, even if it should probably drop the statline to 2/4 (plus "Secrets" should go bolded and capitalized, I believe).

Even if it's too disruptive, I like it because of its good flavor, but it needs some serious balancing.

I like Nixxue more but it's too uninteractive right now. I'd make it so that characters take one extra turn to unfreeze, instead of being for ever.

neither "heroes" nor "unfreeze" should be capitalized. I'd also use thaw instead of unfreeze.

A very simple but nice card. Not much to add here, since it seems quite balanced.

The effects don't quite mesh together :C I'd stick to just one or two prompts.

The effect is a bit too similar to Arcane Keysmith, to my taste. A bit hypocritical, given my card is bascially a Spellslingerwith extra stuff, but whatevs.

linkblade91: Pretty decent flavor imo and overall the card isn't too complex. My only issue is that it's pretty RNG since the Ice Pillar freezes random minions and can even hit itself. Not only that, some classes aren't able to deal with it so they might just instalose the moment it comes down. My suggestion would be to change Ice Pillar so it hits only other friendly minions and then make it so that it has an easier time dying as maybe a 0/3 or 0/4.

Wailor: Honestly, I was about to bring a card like Frostbitten Raider but I just couldn't find the right art for it so I decided against it. Ghost of Winterveil Past is pretty solid as well though I prefer it if it is Neutral rather than Rogue because the effect seems par for other Neutral Epics like Mischief Maker or Drakkari Trickster. Personally, I'd go with Frostbitten Raider since its effect is more interesting as it has no counterpart in the game.

Demonxz95: It should be illegal to reuse really good cards like this lmao. Gift Wrapper is also a pretty good card, it's not as good as Ice Sculptor but it has solid flavor and balance.

BloodMeFist: I think Festive Crusader is pretty weak and could be a 1/5 if you plan to make it a Battlecry effect. Honestly, I'd preferred if it was a Deathrattle effect so you could have an easier time making the second part of the text matter, in which case it should be a 1/1 or a 1/2. Flavorwise it's a bit weak but I don't have too much suggestions for you. You could probably rename it into something like Mysterious Champion or something along those lines.

anchorm4n: I don't think I have an issue with Christmas Tree aside from the fact that it is called Christmas Tree and that it doesn't really look like one. My suggestion is to either change the art or the name. Balancewise I think it's better if you use the Rare version because I think the Epic version could be really hard to deal with and it incentivizes your opponent to trigger your secrets even more and that's already bad but they also have a 2/5 to deal with. It could steamroll pretty quickly. My suggestion for the Epic one is to change it so that it's a round start effect instead or make it a 2/3.

DestroyeR: Flavorwise it's pretty good but the card needs better clarification as to how it works. Like by giving it back does it mean that it will return to the deck or to their hand? Also, the card could also be similar to Carnivorous Cube where it just has a Deathrattle instead to return the cards. It makes it more interesting imo but maybe it's too strong with Shadowstep effects.

DavnanKillder: Disguised Saboteur is a bit unplayable since it requires too many things to be playable. You could honestly buff it so it triggers whenever a minion is summoned so you still have a combo potential or just make it deal 3 damage and give it less attack and more health. Nixue is good, no changes from me.

KANSAS: Spectral Tiger is really solid, I think that card is really flavorful and balanced so I don't think I can think of anything wrong with it. Maybe make it Rare but it's just as fine as an Epic.

FieselFitz: The card has design issues that I can't really grasp how balanced it is. Honestly, the card is fine if it summons a Water Elemental for you only but it'd be boring that way.

DavnanKillder: I like both of these cards. Nixue would be completely broken in Mage but it works since Shaman currently only has single-target freezing, and Disguised Saboteur is a really fun concept. I'd say find some more Winter-flavored art for the saboteur though since it doesn't really have Christmas flavor (it doesn't have to but I think it would help).

Wailor: Frostbitter Raider is a hilarious card that could actually be good in certain circumstances, and the Ghost of Winterveil Past is a fun one (I'd go with the neutral one out of the two).

BloodMefist: Good handbuff support, I like it.

Demonxz95: You can just say "Discover a Secret and cast it" since Ring Toss did that. I like the idea, but maybe make it a secret from another class to better fit Rogue since the art isn't very Roguish.

anchorm4n: Maybe do it as 2 damage to a random enemy for each, that would still make it good without giving Hunter too good of a board clear.

FieselFitz: I don't think going for all three prompts works for this contest, either ditch the secret requirement or the enemy Water Elemental.

KANSAS: Good effect, but I'd try to give it more Christmas/Winter flavor. That's not a requirement, but it wouldn't surprise me if that helps in this comp.

DestroyerR: I like it, good flavor and cool effect.

Demonxz95. Good effect, but pretty simple.

linkblade91: Interesting, but I think it's a little overcomplicated and I'm not sure how your opponent would be able to get rid of the Ice Pillar.

FieselFitz, The wording should say "Battlecry: If you control a Secret, summon a copy of this for each player." That aside, the card is pretty weak. Compare it to [Hearthstone Card (Griffin Trainer) Not Found], even though you get more stats, the card is still bad since your opponent gets to attack with the minion first. Also compare it to Occult Conjurer, it costs 1 more, has +1/+1, but also gives your opponent a 5/5. So really, triggering the ability on this card is a negative.

anchorm4n, I like the second version better. Maybe it could be 4 mana with slightly higher stats, but I think it is mostly fine as it is.

Demonxz95, I like it. It is flexible, useful, balanced, bounce-able, everything that makes a good rogue card. Good job.

BloodMefist, Overall I think it is balanced. At it's base it is fairly weak, but when buffed is better than Mysterious Challenger. The payoff is worth the effort you would put into buffing it, and it doesn't feel terrible playing it when it only has 1 attack. Well done.

Wailor, I think you could submit Ghost of Winterveil Past as a priest card and have a very good shot of winning. The flavor of the card is so strong, it doesn't even matter if it is just a glorified Spellslinger. I would give it 5 stars right now.

DavnanKillder, I am still not a fan of Nixue since it can basically just grind the game to a halt and straight up stop your opponent from playing. Disguised Saboteur is more interactive and less frustrating.

Hordaki, I like it. It seems balanced, and the flavor is pretty good. I don't have any criticisms.